The best of EcoWatch, right in your inbox. Sign up for our email newsletter!

Hail Storm Buries Parts of Mexican City of Guadalajara in Ice

A deluge of hail engulfed the outskirts of Guadalajara on Sunday, half-burying vehicles in ice and damaging nearly 200 homes.

The freak hail storm in one of Mexico's largest cities came as summer temperatures hovered around 31 degrees Centigrade (88 degrees Fahrenheit) in recent days.

"I've never seen such scenes in Guadalajara," said the governor of Jalisco state, Enrique Alfaro. "Then we asked ourselves if climate change is real. These are never-before-seen natural phenomena," he said. "It's incredible."

At least six neighborhoods were covered in ice up to two meters (two yards) deep.

Children were seen playing in the ice and throwing snowballs at each other in the middle of summer, while people stood around near piles of ice wearing t-shirts.

Civil Protection personnel and soldiers brought out machinery to clear the roads.

Civil Protection office said nobody was injured, but two people showed early signs of hypothermia.

An image of the trans-alaskan oil pipeline that carries oil from the northern part of Alaska all the way to valdez. This shot is right near the arctic national wildlife refuge. kyletperry / iStock / Getty Images Plus

The Trump administration has initialized the final steps to open up nearly 1.6 million acres of the protected Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge to allow oil and gas drilling.

A Florida man has been allowed to import a Tanzanian lion's skin, skull, claws and teeth, a first since the animal was listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, according to US Fish and Wildlife Service records uncovered by the Center for Biological Diversity through the Freedom of Information Act.

A fracked natural gas well in northwest Louisiana has been burning for two weeks after suffering a blowout. A state official said the fire will likely burn for the next month before the flames can be brought under control by drilling a relief well.